


Cuddles for Jehan

by talefeathers



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, College, Cuddling & Snuggling, Drabble Collection, Fluff, Hugs, M/M, Swearing, pssst if you're here for the courf/jehan skip to chapter 8 but you didn't hear that from me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-30
Updated: 2013-05-30
Packaged: 2017-12-13 11:48:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 2,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/823972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talefeathers/pseuds/talefeathers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of 8 drabbles about Jean Prouvaire being hugged/cuddled by each of the other Amis de l'ABC.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Grantaire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vespertide](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vespertide/gifts).



> A friend of mine who I associate with Jehan was feeling down and asked for a cuddle, and since I live across an ocean from her I wrote her a drabble about Grantaire giving Jehan a cuddle instead. It was so much fun (and I was having such an identity crisis about which of the Amis I identify as) that I decided to keep going. They get longer as they go on, so don't let the brevity of the first few stop you; because they're drabbles, though, it is a lot easier to view the whole work at once rather than chapter by chapter. Enjoy!

“JEHAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!”

Jehan closed his eyes and sighed, but couldn’t help a smile. Because Grantaire was loud and brash and rude and drunk and sometimes infuriating with his feigned lack of passion, but Grantaire was also kind and smart and talented and _free,_ and, more than all these things, Grantaire was his friend.

“Hello, Grantaire. What’s on tap today?”

“What ISN’T?” Grantaire slurred gleefully, wrapping the young poet in a tight embrace, rubbing his face into the crook of Jehan’s neck like a cat. “I love you, you whimsical little fucker.”

Jehan chuckled, giving the drunkard an affectionate shove. “I love you, too.”


	2. Enjolras and Combeferre

Enjolras didn’t stop to catch his breath. The moment he had burst into the cafe he launched into a head count. Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Marius, Joly, Bossuet, Feuilly, Bahorel, even Grantaire…

“Where’s Prouvaire?”

The others, who were coughing, gasping, taking inventory of their wounds, froze. Combeferre moved first, making a lurch for the door, but Enjolras grabbed his arm to stay him.

“We’re outnumbered. They’ll only have two scapegoats instead of one if you go. But they won’t kill him. Not yet. He’s the face of our ‘terrorist organization’ now — they’ll want to try him publicl —”

His sentence was cut off by a thundering on the door. Louder than any of them had ever heard it before, Jehan’s voice: “OPEN UP, IT’S ME!”

Combeferre wrenched his arm from Enjolras’s hold and tore the door open, crushing the little poet in a hug. “Don’t ever scare me like that again!” he croaked.

“I’m sorry, I fell behind, I —”

“You’re safe,” Enjolras said. The moment Combeferre released their lost sheep Enjolras surprised them all (none more than Jehan himself) by being the next to pull him into a tight, relieved embrace. “That’s all that matters.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't actually mean for these two to end up crammed together - it just sort of happened that way. I'm sorry if it makes the collection seem unbalanced!


	3. Bahorel

Jehan felt like having his backpack ripped off of his shoulders and its contents dumped onto the concrete while his arms were held pinned behind his back wasn’t something that he should have to get used to, but he almost was. It was because of the way he dressed, he knew; the scarves and the pastels and the flowers. Why such gentle imagery was so threatening to these overly masculine peers of his remained a mystery to him (a slightly amusing one, he had to admit). He didn’t struggle as he had the first couple of times this had happened, but waited to be shoved to the ground so that he could collect his things while his tormentors chuckled. He supposed he should be thankful at least that they weren’t creative; this was the fifth time now, and they hadn’t varied their attack one iota from the first.

_“HEY!”_

The upperclassmen stopped laughing and turned to discover who had roared at them with such ferocity. Jehan continued to stuff his books back into his bag, a little smile floating to his lips like ice to the top of a glass. Because _he_ knew to whom that bellow belonged.

Bahorel barrelled into the group, grabbing the shirtfront of the thug nearest him and slamming him up against the brick building Jehan had been trying to enter. It took the other three a while to move, so shocked were they at this turn of events.

“If it takes four of you to bother my friend here, it’s gonna take a fuckin’ _army_ to put me down,” he growled. He spun around and shoved the guy he’d grabbed back at the rest of his friends. “Leave him alone or your mommas won’t be able to identify your bodies, got it?”

“Jesus, calm down,” one of them murmured, but when Bahorel feigned a lunge, they beat a quick retreat.

Bahorel offered a hand to help Jehan up. “You okay, kid?”

“Fine, thanks,” Jehan said, shouldering his bag. “They haven’t hurt me, just my books.”

“Yeah, well, lemme know if they try it again — I would _love_ to kick their pansy asses.” He threw an arm around Jehan’s neck and pulled him into a rough embrace, ruffling his hair. “Go learn somethin’, kiddo.”


	4. Marius

“She _smiled_ at me!”

Jehan had been reading — which meant that he had been absorbed heart, mind, and soul in the words on the page — so it had come as quite a shock to him to realize that his feet were now off of the ground and that he was being spun around his dorm room, held tightly by the excitable Marius Pontmercy.

“Wh-what? Who? Marius, put me down!”

“Sorry!” Marius dropped Jehan back into his desk chair, grinning with his whole face and shaking like a chihuahua. “That beautiful girl, the one I’ve been telling you about, the one I always pass on the way to Etymology, she _smiled_ at me! Jehan, it was _breathtaking,_ it it it took everything already lovely about her face and just somehow crystalised it, as though that’s how her face was made to me seen; it was made to be smiling, and I was made to make her smile, to devote myself to ensuring her perfect happiness!”

Jehan’s grin had grown to bursting capacity and now he released it in a gale of laughter. “You are the proof that love turns people to poets,” he said. “I don’t think anything else could have coaxed such gilded words from your stumbling tongue!”


	5. Joly

Jehan didn’t usually try to write when he wasn’t feeling the words; he wrote for the joy of it, and the joy was in the easy way his heart threaded itself through the page on ribbons of ink.

Today was different. Today he was frustrated, he was angry, he was irritable and tired and edgier than he’d been in a long while. Something had told him that trying to articulate his feelings on a blank page might make him feel better, but as every verse that unravelled from his pen seemed clumsy and tangled and frayed he soon gave up with a growl. He threw himself into his bed, slamming his pillow down over his head and hoping that maybe he’d fall asleep in spite of its only being six o’clock.

“Um… Jehan?”

Jehan grumbled in response. Even past the pillow over his ears he could hear Joly inhale sharply.

“Please don’t tell me you’re sick,” he moaned. “I’ve got — I’ve got an anatomy test coming up and all sorts of organic chemistry to catch up on and —”

“I’m not! I’m not sick,” Jehan cut across him hastily. “Just. Rough day.”

“Oh.” 

There was a moment of silence in which Jehan thought Joly had left. Then there was a squeak and a shift of the mattress as Joly sat down at the foot of the bed.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not particularly.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

Jehan sighed. Because there wasn’t, not really. This was just a bout of melancholy, just a mood; he just needed to ride it out. Rather than answer, he sat up and dropped his head onto Joly’s shoulder.

The pre-med student tensed initially, but then slowly relaxed. He slung an arm around his droopy friend, giving his shoulder a little squeeze.

“I could make you some tea?”

“You know what? I’d actually like that.”


	6. Feuilly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big shoutout to Chloe (houseofhanover) for her help with this one!

Thanks to the cold it seemed like years before Feuilly opened the door, but in reality it hadn’t been more than three minutes.

Already irritable, however, Jehan still hissed _“Finally,_ Jesus,” through chattering teeth, pushing his way into his older friends’ seedy building. Feuilly chuckled.

“Sorry, champ. Lotta stairs. What happened, again? I couldn’t really hear you on the phone.”

“My roommate’s just — insane,” Jehan blurted, following Feuilly up the stairs. “It usually doesn’t affect me, since he’s hardly ever there, but today he thought he’d pass the time by flooding the hall, and usually I’d stay with the guys, but… well, y’know…” He swallowed past the recollection of his fight with Courfeyrac. “And we can’t get back in until Monday at the earliest, and I didn’t want to impose on any of the girls and the next closest person I even know lives two hours away, so…”

“Well, I’m glad you exhausted literally every other resource you had before coming to us,” Feuilly teased, ruffling the kid’s hair before turning to unlock his door. “That is a big, steaming pile of suck. You can stay with us as long as you want, though. And any time you want, too, of course. For future reference.”

He shouldered the door open and tossed his keys onto the kitchen table while Jehan dropped his stuff next to the air mattress that had been set up in the living area.

“Bahorel won’t be back til late, but I’m sure he’ll trip over you on his way to bed and say hi.”

“Thank you so much,” Jehan sighed. “I don’t even know what I would’ve done — I’d’ve been shit outta luck, I guess.”

“Not on my watch,” Feuilly grinned, putting a kettle on for hot chocolate. “Jeez, you look frozen, I’ll be right back.”

Jehan sat down on the mattress while he waited, rubbing his hands together and trying to distract himself from his jittering nerves by reading the various posters Feuilly and Bahorel had up on the walls. When Feuilly returned he sat down beside him and draped something over Jehan’s shoulders, resting his chin on his young friend’s head and rubbing his back.

Jehan exhaled and let his eyes fall shut. He was mostly thawed and almost asleep when the kettle’s whistle called him back. He shook himself and pulled away so that Feuilly could finish making cocoa.

That’s when Jehan noticed exactly what he’d been wrapped up in all this time.

“Feuilly… is this a Polish flag?”

Feuilly answered only by giggling from behind the counter.

“You’ve got to be kidding me right now. Is this really all you have to warm your guests up with?”

Feuilly reappeared with a pair of mugs and a huge, unstoppable grin. He shrugged, handing Jehan a mug that matched his makeshift blanket. “I thought it’d cheer you up.”

Jehan tried not to laugh. He was having a bad day, damn it; it was going to take more than Feuilly’s weird obsession with Poland to snap him out of it. And yet…

“How many of these do you have?” he somehow managed to ask through childish, uncontrollable giggles.

“One for every day of the week,” Feuilly said, sitting down next to him on the mattress. “And then a few spare. Okay, like twenty spare.”

Jehan almost spat out the tentative sip of hot chocolate he’d just taken, which made Feuilly laugh, which made Jehan laugh harder, and all at once he was profoundly thankful. Thankful that, even after a day as unarguably shitty as today had been, he had friends who could turn things rightside-up again.


	7. Bossuet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big shoutout to Bri (morelikesassyfras.tumblr.com) for her help with this one!

Bossuet exhaled a long, defeated sigh.

“How bad is it?”

“Um.”

Jehan peeled open his eyes, which he’d squeezed shut upon realizing that his clumsy friend was about to trip in his general direction while holding a glass of red wine. As he’d feared, no mercy had been shown to his clothes. Especially around the crotch area of his mint green pants.

“It’s okay, I just got my period,” he joked feebly.

Bossuet shook his head and chuckled, running his hands over his bald head.

“Ah, fuck, I’m sorry man. Here, lemme help you get cleaned up.”

Jehan couldn’t help but be just a little apprehensive, but he let his friend help him up, hand him a towel, and lend him a change of clothes, all of which occurred without further incident. When Jehan reemerged from the bathroom wearing jeans and a Piggly Wiggly T-shirt that were both just slightly too big for him, Bossuet was waiting, hands stuffed in his pockets, smiling apologetically.

“Just can’t catch a break, huh, Prouvaire?”

Jehan shrugged, waving him off. “Don’t worry about it. I never wear clothes I particularly like when I know I’ll be hanging out with you.”

Bossuet tossed his head back and laughed at that, one hand clutching his stomach.

“It’s probably for the best,” he sighed through a couple of aftershock chuckles. “C’mere.”

With a tired smile, Jehan met Bossuet’s hug with his own, patting the unfortunate fellow’s back when he squeezed him a bit too tight.


	8. Courfeyrac

_“Jesus!”_

Courfeyrac answered with a crooked grin.

“Sorry.”

“How’d you get in here?”

“Montparnasse.”

Jehan sighed. He edged around his visitor like he would any other piece of furniture, dropping his stuff on his bed and starting to unpack.

“You could have stayed with us, you know,” Courfeyrac said.

“I owed Feuilly and Bahorel a visit.”

“Jehan, can you look at me?”

He didn’t want to. He could already tell from Courfeyrac’s voice how pitiful he looked: how big those blue eyes were, how droopy the shoulders, not to mention the usually buoyant, currently snowed-on curls. He’d take one look at him and forget he was mad; he’d think only of kissing those frost-reddened cheeks, running his fingers through that damp hair, and writing words, endless words of love and of forgiveness all over that goosebumped skin. He closed his eyes and exhaled, counted down from ten to stop himself thinking about it. He didn’t answer and he didn’t turn around.

“Jehan, I’m _sorry.”_ The desperation Jehan was hearing was genuine, but he forced himself to ignore it. He continued removing folded clothes from his bag, replacing them in his dresser drawers. “I’m so sorry it feels like my guts are -- are turning themselves inside out and everything in me is just disgusted to even be a _part_ of me because of what I did to you, what I did to -- the best thing I’ve ever been a part of. I’m baffled that you ever even _liked_ me, let alone loved me, and I’m even _more_ baffled that in the face of -- of having someone as perfect as you genuinely care about me, that I would just -- just shit all over it like I did.”

Jehan had stopped unpacking. Tears choked Courfeyrac’s voice and Jehan’s heart was twisting in his chest at the sound. He needed to turn around, he _needed_ to turn around and make this stop, but he stood rooted to the spot, trying to even out his breathing, trying to blink past the blurriness of his vision.

“I’m not asking you to forgive me,” Courfeyrac continued. “You shouldn’t, really. You took a chance on me and I fucked it up. I just --” His voice broke. “I wanted to apologize. It’s not enough and it’ll never make up for it, but I at least wanted to do that.”

The silence that followed trembled in Jehan’s chest like a strong bass note, punctuated every now and then by a weak sniff from Courfeyrac.

“That’s, um. That’s all I had to say. I’ll let you unpack.”

Courfeyrac was halfway out the door before fear of losing him struck Jehan: a wash of cold, a solid weight in his stomach.

“Wait, don’t --!”

He caught up to Courfeyrac in three strides and pulled him roughly into a hug.

“I love you,” Courfeyrac sobbed. He was holding Jehan so tightly that it was painful, but Jehan squeezed him back with equal strength, because he would take the pain of having Courfeyrac with him a thousand times over the pain of watching him leave, and he’d almost realized it too late. “I _love_ you.”

“I love you, too,” Jehan murmured into Courfeyrac’s shoulder. They stayed that way until neither had any tears left to spend, holding each other like letting go meant letting go forever. When they eventually did find their way to the bed, it was to drop into it and sleep, still curled into each other’s arms.


End file.
